Biography

Almond, Edward Mallory (Ned) [MajGen CG X-Corps]

Major General
Edward M. “Ned” Almond commanded X Corps, not as a part of Eighth Army but
directly under General Douglas MacArthur. Almond, as a captain, had commanded a
machine gun battalion in France in World War I. During World War II he had been
given command of the 92nd Division, an all black unit, because General Marshall
thought, as a southerner, he understood blacks and knew how to handle them. It
was not a successful or happy experience. Almond’s career seemed stuck until, in
1948, he was assigned to the Far Eastern Command where he became MacArthur’s
chief of staff. MacArthur was sufficiently impressed with him to assign him to
command X Corps when it was formed for the Inch'ŏn landing.

William Sebald,
who was General MacArthur’s diplomatic advisor, called Almond “a vitriolic man.”
Thomas Mainane, staff secretary to
the Far Eastern Command, said Almond was impossible. Very snotty. He would call
me up and chew me out about[absurdly] small things, like there being no
thimbles in the PX. I soon developed a very low opinion of him. He gave Walker a
bad time.” Another observer had this view: “When it paid to be aggressive, Ned
was aggressive. When it paid to be cautious, Ned was aggressive.” His corps G-3,
John Chiles, commented, “He could precipitate a crisis on a desert island with
nobody else around.” Blair p
32

At Inch'ŏn he had been demanding, arrogant, and impatient. He had
little concern for conventional tactical doctrine which called for a division to
be employed as a unit, closed up and operating as a cohesive group. Almond was
inclined to deploy his forces in isolated fragments, to create small regimental
or battalion sized task forces and send them off on independent missions beyond
mutual support. He wanted quick capture of real estate for psychological or
publicity reasons. He antagonized his division and regimental commander by
flying or driving around the front and giving orders directly to battalion or
even company commanders. Grabbing the 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry, and sending
it off to Chosin before the regimental commander was even aware of it was a good
example. Almond was courageous, even reckless, and expected everybody else to
be. But this attitude was interpreted by many subordinate commanders as a
callous indifference to casualties and the welfare of the men.

General
Almond’s inability to identify himself with the men of his command and their
perilous situation is illustrated by an incident that occurred one morning after
the Chinese attack when he flew into Hagaru-ri to confer with General Smith.
Feeling the need to chat up the troops and make himself agreeable he approached
two Marines in their foxhole.

“Well men, and how are you today? Pretty cold
isn't it." The two, half frozen, grimy, and bearded, peered up at him blankly.
“Do you know I wear a plate?" Almond continued oblivious to the condition of the
men, "When I got up this morning, there was a film of ice on the glass by my
bed."

"That's too fucking bad, General," said one of the men
who could not dare to dream of ever seeing a bed again, whose only wish at the
time was for another sunrise. Almond smiled and strolled on, still oblivious of
the impression he had made. The story was related by his senior aide, Major
Jonathon F. Ladd, to Max Hastings.

When the
Korean War broke out, Almond was serving as chief of staff to General of the
Army Douglas MacArthur at General Headquarters, Far East Command. In September
1950, he was named to command X Corps for the Inch'ŏn Landing.

10 Corps
commander Almond, Edward Mallory

The performance of these black combat forces
was uneven. Sent to North Africa, the 2d Cav Division was declared a complete
failure. It was deactivated without seeing combat; its men were assigned to rear
area service units. Sent to the Southwest Pacific Theater, the 93d was employed
principally to occupy rear areas and perform "service" chores. However, its 25th
Infantry, temporarily attached to the Americal Division on Bougainville, did
well in brief combat. A battalion of the independent 24th Infantry (the 1/24),
which had spent most of its time performing "service" duties (as stevedores,
etc.), also did well in brief fighting on Bougainville, while temporarily
attached to the 37th Division. Reorganized as an independent unit, the full 24th
Infantry later distinguished itself during mopping up operations on Guam and
Saipan.

Of all these black outfits, the 92d Division, commanded by Ned
Almond, was the most conspicuous - and controversial. It was committed piecemeal
to combat in Italy in September 1944. First to arrive was its 370th RCT (called
the 92d Combat Team), which pursued retreating Germans north of Rome with some
success. However, when the Germans dug in behind the Arno River, the 370th
bogged down. Arriving later, the division's 365th and 371st regiments did no
better. To provide the division added punch (and replacements), Fifteenth Army
Group commander Mark Clark gave it a fourth regiment, the 366th, patched
together from independent black antiaircraft units already in Italy. When all
these measures failed to inspire the division, Clark broke it up. He withdrew
the 365th, 366th, and 371st regiments into army and corps reserves and
substituted two new regiments: the famous 442d, composed of Japanese-Americans,
and the 473d, also newly created from deactivated antiaircraft units. The black
370th Regiment, restaffed by "The Most Capable" of the men in the 365th, 366th,
and 371st, remained on the battle line with the 442d and 473d, but the latter
two did most of the division's heavy fighting. Almond pronounced the 370th to be
"reasonably safe" but only with "constant attention" and "careful leadership."

19500625 0000 32tfw0

The exception among his professional confidants was
Major General Edward M. ("Ned") Almond, MacArthur's chief of staff and, by
virtue of his position, the second most powerful American in Tokyo. Ned Almond
was a brilliant human dynamo. Eisenhower, in 1948, rated him as one of the half
dozen ablest men in the Army. Almond's mind inspired awe and fear; his energy
evoked humor. One admirer, John H. Chiles, said: "He could precipitate a crisis
on a desert island with nobody else around." Another, Maurice H. Holden, said:
"When it paid to be aggressive, Ned was aggressive. When it paid to be cautious,
Ned was aggressive."

Almond's early Army career had been highly
promising. Born in Luray, Virginia, in 1892, he was graduated from the Virginia
Military Institute (VMI) in 1915 and one year later obtained a Regular Army
commission. In World War I he won a Silver Star Medal commanding a machinegun
battalion in France. During the peacetime years his climb up the career ladder
was steady and sure. He was early selected for the Command and General Staff
School (1928), the Army War College (1934), voluntarily attended the Army Air
Corps Tactical School, qualifying as an observer (1939), and the Naval War
College (1940). When World War II broke out, he was among the first of his peers
to be promoted to general and the first to achieve every infantryman's dream:
command of a division.

The problem was the division. Fellow VMI graduate
George Marshall assigned Almond to command the 92d Infantry Division, one of
three divisions composed of blacks commanded mostly by white officers. After
training the division for a year and a half at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, Almond
took it to Italy in late 1944. The division failed in combat and had to be
broken up and reorganized.

Almond was not blamed for the failure of his black
troops in combat. There was a longstanding and widespread belief in the strictly
segregated U.S. Army that "Negroes won't fight." The performance of Almond's 92d
Division merely served to reinforce that belief. However, by his taking on the
assignment, Almond's highly promising career had been sidetracked, and as a
result, he had fallen far behind his contemporaries. Moreover, he had suffered
terrible personal grief. His only son, Edward M., Jr., a West Pointer (1943),
had been killed in action in the ETO, as had his only daughter's husband, West
Pointer (1942) Thomas T. Galloway.

19500625 0000 33tfw0

Despite these professional and personal setbacks, Almond emerged from the war in
high repute and with ambition still intact. However, there was not much hope
that before mandatory retirement he could catch up with his contemporaries, some
of whom were three or four-star generals. In 1946, seeking a change of scenery
and faces, he asked for duty in the Far East and was assigned to MacArthur's
general headquarters (GHQ) in Tokyo as G1, or personnel expert. Owing to the
pell-mell postwar demobilization and restaffing problems in the Far East, this
ordinarily humdrum assignment proved to be a monumental challenge. Almond
handled it with high competence and loyalty, thereby gaining MacArthur's utmost
confidence. As a result, when MacArthur's chief of staff, Paul J. Mueller, was
rotated home in January 1949, Almond, who was the most senior and capable
general on the GHQ staff, replaced him. Almond thus became the first "outsider"
(or "European Theater general") to penetrate MacArthur's inner circle. But it
was a dead-end job. With the promotion of his junior, Joe Collins, to Army chief
of staff, there was no future in the postwar Army for Ned Almond and, owing to
Collins's intense dislike of Almond, probably only a slim chance of a third star
on retirement.

The Army general who set the tone of the northeastern
Korea campaign was a contradictory figure even in Army circles, where he was
known. He was the object of a special brand of scorn on the part of Marine
officers, who failed utterly to understand his style or appreciate his worth.

Lieutenant General Edward Almond was a Virginia Military Institute alumnus in an
Army dominated by West Pointers. He had commanded an all-Negro infantry division
in the mountains of Italy, and even in the newly integrated Army that might have
been seen as a stigma; he was, at all events, a superlative division commander,
exceptionally adept at the sort of mountain warfare X Corps was waging in North
Korea.

Almond was an extremely intelligent man, and an exceptionally hard
worker, who drove his staff to match his own output, an achievement requiring
fifteen-to-twenty-hour workdays. He always knew to within a hairsbreadth the
location of each battalion under his command, and the contact points of every
unit in X Corps. He had been a tireless leader at Inch'ŏn-Sŏul, getting to the
front, often under fire, every day he had troops in combat.But he had shown
a serious lack of technical expertise to Marine officers with whom he came in
contact. At Inch'ŏn, on seeing lines of amphibious tractors making for the
beaches with their loads of Marine riflemen, he had asked a very senior Marine
general if he thought they would remain afloat, a possibly understandable lapse
by a man who had never before witnessed an amphibious assault. On another
occasion he had spotted a battery of Marine 105mm howitzers set for high-angle
fire, their barrels pointing almost straight up. The corps commander marveled
aloud at the speed with which Marines could set up 90mm antiaircraft guns. That
was unpardonable; Almond had certainly seen his share of 105mm howitzers in
battery since 1940.Those were just the sort of gaffes that could turn combat
troops away from even as robust a field commander as Ned Almond.

NOVEMBER 27
49

The general's worst problems arose from the ambiguity of his position in
the chain of command. In addition to his duties as the commander of an
independent corps operating directly under GHQ-Tokyo, Almond served as Douglas
MacArthur's chief of staff. But he was a virtual outsider on the staff of which
he was, nominally at least, chief. The MacArthur clique was manned largely by
highly politicized generals, all personally loyal to Douglas MacArthur; they
were men who had served their general throughout the Pacific War, talented
sycophants who appear to have shunned Almond both as their superior and as a
subordinate corps commander.

While in the field — and he never left it when
his corps was in action — Almond was totally at the mercy of GHQ-Tokyo for the
support he required if he was to operate an independent command.

There is no
way to be certain, but it is just possible that Tokyo intentionally withheld
from Almond news of the rout of 8th Army. At the moment the general was being
berated by the Marine convoy master, 8th Army was a rabble in headlong retreat.
Neither Almond nor any man in northeastern Korea knew that. It is possible, of
course, that GHQ-Tokyo merely misdiagnosed the fighting

19501127 1400
047chosin0

on the western wing, never considering the impact it might have
upon X Corps. But that is doubtful, for 8th Army had received crippling hammer
blows over all of the previous forty-eight hours, and Tokyo never murmured the
merest warning. Don France's singularly inept presentation did not move Ned
Almond at the eleventh hour mainly because Ned Almond had been programmed by
GHQ-Tokyo to accept no such warning.

ALMOND AND GENERAL SMITH

Smith, MajGen Oliver P. USMC

The beginning of the story of the tug and pull between MajGen Edward M.
Almond, the X Corps commander, and MajGen Oliver P. Smith, 1st Marine Division
commander, belongs chronologically before 24 November 1950.

This aspect of
developments is mentioned in South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu, and some
background is included in chapter 1 above. The beginnings of the Smith-Almond
disagreements on the conduct of the war in northeast Korea may be traced to
similar differences that began with the Inch'ŏn landing and the 1st Marine
Division drive on Sŏul in September. General Smith wanted to follow Marine
doctrine about holding a tight perimeter at Inch'ŏn until a strong base of supply
had been built up on shore before undertaking a strong push on Sŏul. General
Almond wanted him to proceed rapidly against Sŏul with his Marine division and
get there before the North Koreans could strongly reinforce the city after the
surprise Inch'ŏn landing. And there was also the question of Almond's bringing in
the 7th Infantry Division to help in the attack on Sŏul when Smith objected to
it and thought there was no need for the Army infantry division to enter the
city for that purpose.

The major differences of opinion between
the two generals in north-east Korea centered on the way the 1st Marine Division
should be concentrated and used in the Chosin campaign. Essentially, General
Smith resisted a rapid movement of the Marine division toward Chosin in
battalion and regimental combat groups, separated from each other, and a
subsequent attack northward, without first building up bases of supply along the
MSR from Hamhung and Hungnam and concentrating his division units within
supporting distances of each other. General Almond wished to carry out General
MacArthur's orders for a northward advance as rapidly as possible. The two views
necessarily came into conflict.

General Almond's own personal views on
the details of these problems, as distinct from General MacArthur's orders, are
not easy to discern. It is a matter of record that, when ROK troops of the 26th
Regiment, ROK 3rd Division, captured 16 Chinese prisoners from the 370th
Regiment, 124th Division, near Sudong, on the road from Hungnam to the Chosin
Reservoir on 29 October, and they divulged to General Almond the next day in his
personal interrogation of them that three Chinese divisions, the 124th, 125th,
and 126th, of the Chinese 42nd Army were in the vicinity of the reservoir and
that the 124th Division was approaching Hamhung on the road from the reservoir,
Almond considered this news of paramount importance. When he immediately
communicated this news to the Far East Command, it seems clear that the command
did not take this intelligence of strong Chinese forces in northeast Korea as
seriously during the next two weeks as did General Almond. After the 7th Marine
Regiment relieved the ROK 26th Regiment in front of the Chinese 124th Division
and, in a series of heavy battles, caused the remnants of the Chinese division
to withdraw northward toward the reservoir out of contact with the 7th Marines,
the Far East Command issued orders that minimized the possibility of strong
Chinese opposition to its plan to advance to the border.

50ESCAPING THE TRAP

Major General Willoughby, MacArthur's G-2 intelligence
chief, announced in a meeting at Wŏnsan early in November to assembled Far East
Command and X Corps command staff officers that the Chinese encountered were
volunteers and numbered no more than 10,000. It is unknown how much
influence Willoughby's views had on General Mac-Arthur, but most officers close
to both men at the time thought it was limited — that MacArthur formed his
opinions independent of most of his staff officers. In any event, General
Almond's initially cautious and apprehensive views on the possibility of massive
Chinese intervention seemed to change in the next two weeks, and by the middle
of November he adopted MacArthur's view that the advance to the border could
probably be carried out without serious enemy interference. This led to frequent
disagreements with General Smith, who had the main mission of advancing from the
Chosin Reservoir.

On 7 November, after the 7th Marine Regiment had
decisively defeated the CCF 124th Division in the vicinity of Sudong and
Chinhung-ni, be-low the Koto-ri plateau, Smith conferred with Almond and
repeated his desire to lessen the dispersion of his Marine forces and suggested
that, with the Siberian winter approaching for that part of Korea farther north,
the advance should be halted for the winter because of the difficulty of
operating in extreme cold and of maintaining necessary supplies farther north in
an almost roadless area. Almond listened to his proposal that only enough
terrain be held for the winter to secure Wŏnsan, Hamhung, and Hungnam and that
they not try to hold positions north of Chinhung-ni. Almond agreed to
concentrate the 1st Marine Division, but he felt that it should hold Hagaru-ri
on the Koto-ri plateau at the foot of the Chosin Reservoir. He also said he was
considering stopping the advance of ROK I Corps on the northeast coast and
giving the 7th Infantry Division a smaller zone of action. This conservative
view may have surprised Smith. It did show that Almond had been made more
cautious by the late October and early November Chinese defeat of Eighth Army
units in the west and the X Corps contacts with major Chinese units in the
advance from Hamhung to Chinhung-ni.

MajGen Edward Mallory Almond, commanding the US X Corps at the Inch'ŏn landing in
September and now commanding the same corps and the ROK I Corps in northeast
Korea, was a major figure in the Korean War. He was 58 years old when he faced
the Chinese onslaught against his X Corps in northeast Korea in November and
December 1950. He was promoted to lieutenant general in February 1951 and held
that rank when he returned to the United States in July 1951 and became
commandant of the Army War College the next month.

General Almond in
1950 and 1951 in Korea had several nicknames. Generally, he was known to his
friends and close associates as Ned. Other names were "Ned, the Anointed," which
meant he was a favorite of General MacArthur's, and "Ned, the Dread," which
referred to his power, brusque manner, and sometimes arbitrary actions. He was
nearly always decisive in his actions.

Almond gave unswerving loyalty
and dedicated service to his superior, General MacArthur, thereby becoming
controversial at times in the orders he issued as X Corps commander and in the
relationship between the X Corps and the US Eighth Army in Korea. To most in the
Eighth Army, Almond and his X Corps were thought unduly favored at the Far East
Command during September—December 1950. Later, this feeling
largely disappeared when the X Corps became a part of the Eighth Army—certainly it did among the more objective and observant. General Ridgway
commented that he knew of no evidence that MacArthur favored Almond over other
elements of the American command in Korea. Ridgway considered Almond a mainstay
and a standout among his corps commanders of Eighth Army in 1951, and stated
privately several times that Almond was his best corps commander.

The
belief that General MacArthur showed favoritism to Almond and the X Corps at the
expense of General Walker's Eighth Army was heightened when, after the Inch'ŏn
landing and the capture of Sŏul, MacArthur decided to keep the X Corps separate
from Eighth Army. He did not subordinate it to General Walker in a unified
Korean command but sent it to northeast Korea to clear the region of scattered
North Korean troops, maintaining it as a command reporting directly to him in
Tokyo.

46ESCAPING THE TRAP

I first met General Almond on 13 December 1951 at the
Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. That conversation with him
lasted an hour and 15 minutes in his large comfortable office. Later that
evening the interview extended for another two and one-half hours at his
quarters, the large commandant's home at the old military post. Throughout the
years since then, I have had numerous meetings with General Almond and have had
a rather voluminous correspondence with him on questions relating to the Korean
War and interviews on controversial questions relating to the war.

When
I first met General Almond in December 1951, I wondered what kind of reception I
would have, because I intended to ask questions that I thought he might find
objectionable. I survived that danger. Over the years, Almond demonstrated a
profound interest in military history. Even in my last meeting with him, when he
was 85, I found him keen of mind, incisive, and able to concentrate without a
break for five hours, though suffering from a malady that had stricken him — a
picture of courage, firmness, and adherence to lifelong ideals of loyalty and
patriotism.

His undeviating loyalty to Gen. Douglas MacArthur is a
characteristic that one must know and accept to understand Almond's actions in
the Korean War. When I brought up the charge that he had obtained sup-plies for
the X Corps in its east-coast landing in October 1950 that should instead have
gone to Eighth Army, Almond denied the allegation vehemently and paced the
floor, disturbed and angry. He denied any special influence with MacArthur in
the matter. To him, the issue was simply one of carrying out MacArthur's orders.
The criticism, as he viewed it, I thought, was an attack on General MacArthur.
Almond never failed to rise to MacArthur's defense in all matters. In this
conversation he said to me at one point that he did "not give his loyalty to a
crook — and I will say that to Bradley" (Gen. Omar Bradley, then chairman, joint
Chiefs of Staff). He stuck out his chin with those words and glared at me.

My impression of General Almond on this first meeting, in December 1951, maybe
worth recording here from notes written that evening: "Hair turning gray, bright
blue eyes, ruddy complexion, fairly tight skin over face, several deep
horizontal furrows across brow when he frowns, hands rather small — at least not
large, nails picked off denoting his excess nervous energy and temperament,
medium stature, slightly stooped across shoulders. Obviously positive,
energetic, and I would say personally fearless— a fearless fighting man.
No doubt impetuous and guilty of mistakes. But he will act."jump-off from
Yudam-ni47

Almost four decades after that meeting, and on the basis of
consider-able correspondence and several lengthy interviews with him and many
years of study of the Korean War and his role in it, I believed General Almond
to have been a man of integrity and courage, an old-fashioned patriot, one who
was loyal to his friends, a brave soldier, and probably the best American corps
commander in the Korean War. His greatest weakness as a commander in Korea was
his conviction that MacArthur could do no wrong. This stance led him to think
ill of MacArthur's critics and in turn brought into question his own ability to
form independent judgments of enemy intentions and capabilities. This was a view
also held even by some of the more devoted and discerning of his own staff in
the X Corps operations in northeast Korea and the Chosin Reservoir campaign in
late 1950.

Let us pass on from these subjective views to Almond's
credentials as a soldier and commander at the time he led X Corps. His whole
life and training had been for the Army. Born in Luray, Virginia, on 12 December
1892, he attended grade and high school there and in Culpeper and went on to the
Virginia Military Institute, from which he graduated in 1915. The next year he
entered the United States Army as a second lieutenant in the First Provisional
Class at Fort Leavenworth, and after three months' training there, he was
assigned as a second lieutenant with the US 4th Infantry on the Mexican border
at Brownsville, Texas. Later he commanded a company in that regiment, and
subsequently one in the 58th Infantry. When the 4th Infantry Division was formed
at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, he served in it as a company commander. When it
went to Europe during World War I, Almond, now a major, was commander of its
12th Machine Gun Battalion. He served in all its major engagements in the
Aisne-Marne and Meuse-Argonne offensives in France. He was wounded in action in
August 1918. He held the rank of major, infantry, at the end of the war.

After nearly a year's duty in the army of occupation in Germany, Almond in the
next 24 years held a number of varied assignments in the Army, including
attendance at just about all the special military service schools in the United
States. General Ridgway later described him as one of the best militarily
educated soldiers in the US Army in all-around military theory and special
military tactical and weapons practices. After World War I he served as
professor of military science and tactics at Marion Institute, Alabama; was a
student at the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, for a year, and then an
instructor in tactics at the infantry school for four years; and afterward
attended the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth for two years.
Upon completing that course in 1930, he was assigned to the 45th Infantry at
Fort William McKinley, Philippine Islands, where he commanded a battalion of
Philippine troops for three years. He came back to the United States after this
duty and attended the Army War College in 1933 — 34; served in the military
intelligence section of the War Department General Staff for four years;
attended the Air Corps Tactical School at Maxwell Field, Alabama, as a ground
officer learning the principles of combat aviation; was a student at the Naval
War College; and in 1940 was G-3, VI Army Corps, at Providence, Rhode Island,
and later became the corps's chief of staff. He held the rank of colonel at that
time.

48ESCAPING THE TRAP

After the United States entered World War II, Almond
became assistant division commander of the 93rd Division, and subsequently, in
August 1942, the commanding general of the 92nd Infantry Division, a post he
held during its training in the United States and in its combat operations in
Italy from September 1944 to May 1945, when the war ended there. Almond's
command in Italy covered the area of the Ligurian Alps and the coastal area from
Pisa and Genoa westward to the French border. At one time he had under his
command not only the 92nd Infantry Division but also the famous
Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team from Hawaii and the 473rd
Infantry Regiment, several tank and artillery battalions, for a strength of
about 24,000 men. With this force he drove up the Ligurian coast to capture
Genoa and on to the French border and to the headwaters of the Po River, near
Tiffin. In this campaign, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, as usual, performed
as the principal assault force, with its customary distinction.

At the
end of World War II in Europe, General Almond was given command of the 2nd
Infantry Division, then assembling from Europe for the purpose of redeploying to
the Pacific Theater to assist in ending the war there. But before the 2nd
Division and others designated for the purpose could be redeployed, the war with
Japan ended. Almond continued to command the 2nd Division in the United States
until June 1946, when he and 11 other general officers were transferred to
Tokyo. There Almond was assigned as MacArthur's G-1, the personnel officer, for
Army matters. After six months in that role, near the end of 1946, he became
deputy chief of staff, Far East Command, for Army functions, under Mac-Arthur.

In February 1949, General MacArthur made Almond his chief of staff. He held
that important and powerful post until MacArthur, on 12 September 1950, gave him
command of X Corps for the Inch'ŏn landing. It seems that Almond actually held
two posts — commanding general of X Corps and chief of staff, Far East Command.
It appears that MacArthur intended to lend Almond temporarily from his permanent
post as chief of staff, FEC, to lead the X Corps in what MacArthur apparently
believed would be a relatively short campaign that would end the war. Almond
would then return to his chief of staff post in Tokyo. MajGen Doyle O. Hickey,
deputy chief of staff, would serve as acting chief of staff for Mac-Arthur
during Almond's absence with the X Corps. Almond's dual status caused
considerable talk in military circles in the Far East Command, but it was
MacArthur's wish that Almond have this status. Almond remained in Korea as
commanding general of X Corps until 15 July 1951, when he was rotated back to
the United States as commandant of the Army War College. As X Corps commander
under Ridgway, he performed outstandingly in command of the east-central front
in South Korea.

South then North

General Almond, fifty-eight years old when he assumed
command of X Corps, was a graduate of Virginia Military Institute. In World War
I he had commanded a machine gun battalion and had been wounded and
decorated for bravery. In World War II he had commanded the 92d Infantry
Division in Italy. Almond
went to the Far East Command in June 1946, and served as deputy chief of staff
to MacArthur from
November 1946 to February 1949. On 18 February 1949 he became Chief of Staff,
Far East Command,
and, on 24 July 1950, Chief of Staff, United Nations Command, as well.
General Almond was a man both feared and obeyed throughout the Far East Command.
Possessed of a
driving energy and a consuming impatience with incompetence, he expected from
others the same degree
of devotion to duty and hard work that he exacted from himself. No one who ever
saw him would be
likely to forget the lightning that flashed from his blue eyes. To his
commander, General MacArthur, he
was wholly loyal. He never hesitated before difficulties. Topped by iron-gray
hair, Almond's alert, mobile
face with its ruddy complexion made him an arresting figure despite his medium
stature and the slight
stoop of his shoulders.

June 25, 1950

This particular Sunday the return from wince they came
did not happen exactly as expected. In Tokyo when of the
SCAP staff learned
from
Edith Sebald that something was amiss in Korea, he quickly passed the
word to
General of the Army Douglas A. MacArthur, who was quartered at the
Dai Ichi Life Insurance building. The General had gotten the word
from
General Ned [Edward M.] Almond about two hours after the attack began
[about 6AM].
FEAF
would not learn of it for another three and three quarter hours. It would
not be until 11:30 AM that the whole of FEAF was notified of the incursion.
In the mean time the General of the Army wanted to be alone with his thoughts.
Being so early his wife came in and ask if everything was all right

June 25, 1950

Because the enemy had attacked on a Sunday, telephone
circuits between Tokyo and Sŏul were closed. As a consequence, most
SCAP staff
officers were spared a rude awakening. It was a sunny, pleasant morning; the
Huffs and several others were lounging beside the embassy swimming pool,
enjoying it, when
Edith
Sebald arrived and mentioned casually that she had just heard about the
hostilities on the radio.

Huff questioned her excitedly and rushed to tell MacArthur, but the General
already knew had known, in fact, for hours. In the first gray
moments of daylight a duty officer had phoned from the
Dai Ichi:

"General, we have just received a dispatch from Sŏul,
advising that the North Koreans have struck in great strength south across the
38th Parallel at four o'clock this morning."

"an uncanny feeling of nightmare. . . . It was the same fell note of the war
cry that was again ringing in my ears. It couldn't be, I told myself. Not
again! I must still be asleep and dreaming. Not again! But then came the
crisp, cool voice of my fine chief of staff,
General Ned [Edward M.] Almond, `Any orders, General?"'

Barring urgent developments, the Supreme Commander
said, he wanted to be left alone with his own reflections. Stepping into his
slippers and his frayed robe, he began striding back and forth in his bedroom.
Presently
Jean stepped in from her room.

"I heard you pacing up and down," she said. "Are you all right?"

He told her the news, and she paled. Later
Blackie
bounded in, tried to divert his master with coaxing barks, and failing, slunk
off. Then Arthur appeared for his morning romp with his father. Jean intercepted
him and told him there would be no frolicking today. MacArthur put his arm
around his son's shoulders, paused, thrust his hands in the pockets of his robe,
and renewed his strides.

His moods in those first hours of the new war were
oddly uneven. At the prospect of new challenges, he became euphoric.
George Marshall, during a recent stop in Tokyo, had thought that the Supreme
Commander had

Yet at the same time he appeared. to be trying to
convince himself that there would be no need for action.

June 25, 1950

Confidence in the ROK Army was further reinforced that
day by MacArthur's G2,
Charles Willoughby. It was contained in the first
telecon between
Collins and
Ridgway in the Pentagon
and Willoughby in Tokyo. When Collins and Ridgway queried Willoughby about
the situation in South Korea, Willoughby conceded that it was a major NKPA
invasion aimed at conquering South Korea but that the ROK Army was withdrawing
with "orderliness," the morale of the South Koreans was "good,"
and the
Rhee government was "standing firm." Nonetheless, Willoughby "said,"
GHQ was proceeding with a prearranged contingency plan to evacuate American
personnel (women and children first) by ship from Sŏul's seaport,
Inch'ŏn, with appropriate air and naval protection.[3-14]

This first telecon contained a historically fascinating
sidelight. Without consulting Truman, that day both GHQ, Tokyo, and the
Pentagon decided independently to respond affirmatively to Muccio's request
for a ten-day supply of ammo for the ROK Army. When he received the request,
MacArthur ordered his chief of staff,
Ned Almond, to load two ships immediately. In the telecon Collins asked
Willoughby if he was correct in assuming Tokyo was meeting Muccio's request.
Willoughby replied: "We are meeting emergency request for ammunition."
The two ships would be escorted by air and naval vessels. Thus the Pentagon
and GHQ, Tokyo, had made the decision to project American military power
into South Korea without presidential authorization.[3-15]

June 25, 1950 0700

It was early morning Sunday, June 25, 1950, when the telephone rang
in
my bedroom at the
American
Embassy in Tokyo. It rang with the note of urgency that can sound
only in the hush of a darkened room. It was the duty officer at headquarters. "General,"
he said, "we have just received a dispatch from Sŏul, advising
that the North Koreans have struck in great strength south across the
38th Parallel at four o'clock this
morning." Thousands of Red Korean troops had poured over the border,
overwhelming the South Korean advance posts, and were moving southward
with a speed and power that was sweeping aside all opposition.

I had an uncanny feeling of nightmare. It had been nine years before,
on a Sunday morning, at the same hour, that a telephone call with the
same note of urgency had awakened me in the
penthouse atop the Manila Hotel. It was the same fell note of the
war cry that was again ringing in my ears. It couldn't be, I told myself.
Not again! I must still be asleep and dreaming. Not again! But then
came the crisp, cool voice of my fine chief of staff,
General Ned Almond, "Any orders, General?"